 We're doing more than building guitars. We're helping students discover new abilities within themselves. They're going to take that realization with them after the class and apply it throughout their lives. I had started building guitars around 1990, I imagine. When I tell people I'm a guitar builder, about half the time I say, oh, you must be a really good player. I said, no, I told you, I built them. If you're going to become really good at something, you have to be thinking about it all the time. When I'm not building, I'm thinking about building. I'm not thinking about playing. Okay, come on over. Come on over. Let's learn a little bit about guitars. One of the things we should do is bring our work outside the classroom into the classroom. Have we ever heard of any of the guitar companies? Fender and Gibson are the two that most people have heard of, and those are the ones we care most about right now. So I started a class called MET 349. It's Stringed Instrument Design and Manufacture. This one's a lot harder to make. We will be making these. Students come to this class because they want a guitar. Good, that's what I want. While I got you here, you're going to learn product development and manufacturing. The processes that they're learning to design a product, in this case a guitar, and then to make that product on computer-controlled equipment is about the same as they'll see no matter where they go. So whatever job you get after this, the process will look familiar, even though the product may be different. And that's valuable. How many of you have taken a shop class and a wood shop class? How many of you have not? Starting a class with no manufacturing experience was kind of scary, but you could come from not knowing anything about this class to learning almost anything you want or need to learn. The reason they're in teams is because I want this to simulate the way the industry works. When instruments are designed, they're not designed by a single person. It's a group that conceives that the instrument does the design and takes it to production. Each group is going to design their own instrument and then make one copy of that instrument for everybody who's in a group. I am working on the body of our lovely guitar right here. Keith is working on the neck. I'm working on a parts list. I started by getting all of the dimensions and these are all construction lines. And hopefully once we're done it'll look like more like what we have on the table over here. I'm very lucky with my group. We have such a diverse set of team members. There's someone from theater engineering, someone from MET, someone from ME, and someone from computer science who's never touched equations and engineering at all. So I think that's the strength in that you are able to learn off each other what someone doesn't know someone probably knows in addition to bringing your own skills to the table. What do you think? Do you think that's the problem? I should go over to the table saw. Yes, sir. Use this as your reference surface. Trim that and then come back and try it. Because the problem is your board isn't straight. You see that? You know what to do. Alyssa is a force of nature. She took the class two years ago as an English literature graduate student. Now she's getting her master's in engineering technology and she's my teaching assistant. She's interested in everything and has the energy and the motivation and the intelligence to pursue them. I actually enrolled in the class as a literature student. This class presented a unique opportunity for me to learn about what the kind of student culture was outside of my department, learn more about manufacturing, learn more about a little bit of math. I wasn't great at it, but I learned. It was just fantastic. They were all very, very kind to me. And the reason that I'm here now is entirely because of that class. So right now I can tell what this object is going to be at the very end. I think my favorite part is when it starts to actually look like a guitar shaped object and then it feels like all the progress that you've made has been worth it. When I realized that I wanted a master's in mechanical engineering technology, it happened after the class. Dr. French had mentioned during the class that it was a possibility that even someone from my background, a literature student, could apply for MIT and have a fighting chance. I think he was surprised when I did actually apply, but if he hadn't suggested it, he hadn't mentioned it. I wouldn't have done it. A little high. That's what is good or is okay. It is okay because you can sand that back flush again. If you go low, you're going to have to sand the whole guitar down to the top of that. So if it's too high by the thickness of a business card, that's cool. There is very little quit in her. And so when she came to me and said, well, I want to become a guitar maker. Well, you didn't have to be too bright to look at this and go, well, if anybody can do it, she can. I'm just trying to see now if I like the face grain patterns for my neck. When she first got here, she was telling me all the things she wanted to do. And I told her, you do one my way, and I will help you build whatever you want after that. By God, she took me up on it. Her second guitar was all Alyssa. It's pink and black, very 1950s retro. Because she's Alyssa, she made a dress that matches it. She did a fine job. A lot of the areas in which I lack confidence, one of which is most certainly mathematics, especially graduate level. And most of the time feels like putting on a brave face. I'm trying to learn to be confident in my abilities, but I also acknowledge there's so much that I don't know yet. If she sticks with it, she can be one of the guitar builders that everybody knows about and everybody talks about. I don't know if that's what she wants to do, but she certainly has that ability if she chooses. Lindsay was just flat out one of the best students I've ever had. She took the class two years ago, and she's now a CNC engineer at the Gibson Custom Shop. When she came to the class, even though this is not something she had ever done before, she did as well at this as she's done in all her other classes. I remember a lot of stuff from the class, honestly. I was really excited to actually have a hands-on class, but we got to learn how to make an instrument. Well, I feel like I had a little bit of a crisis when I graduated because I was like, I don't know what I want to do. I never thought I could try a place like this. It's not going to be me. Yeah, I never thought I'd work at a musical instrument making a manufacturing place at all. While I'd like to claim credit for getting her a job at Gibson, I don't think that's really what happened. I had met one of the directors there, and so all I did was contact him and say, I've got one for you, and that's all I did. She did the rest. Definitely wouldn't be here without Purdue. It's such a small field and a lot of people get into it, so it's not something that we've really gone for, honestly, without the help of Mike. Even a lot of classes that have taken up with you have helped me become prepared here, too. With the hands-on, it also gives people more of an understanding and also appreciating for people who do work with the hands of the day, and I think that can cross more to choose of careers because having that respect for people is very important. Helping these students learn to make guitars, it's made me realize that when you make mistakes, it's fine. Having now, you know, TA this class wants, I'll approach it with a different mindset that is less focused on the finished end product and more on, here's how we get there, and then next time you do it, you can do it better. So I am an engineering technology teacher education, so I want to be a middle school or a high school teacher for basically a glorified shop teacher that focuses more on the engineering side. So I hope to bring in classes like what Dr. French is teaching us. I hope to bring in some aspects of that into the classroom. Students work best when they're able to apply what they're learning in physics and math class. I didn't realize how detailed everything is. I mean, I've made couches and chairs and while woodworking is kind of straightforward, this is a very precise instrument and Professor French is really good at taking it step by step in that way. But I'm glad how it turned out. Van Halen inspired and all that. This is a great sense of accomplishment. I mean, it's my first guitar, so it's been a struggle to get to this point and actually have a guitar that is both functional but also looks decent for the first time. Having this guitar class makes you kind of feel empowered in a sense that, oh, you can make something that you want, something that isn't anyone else's. Purdue seems to have a willingness to consider unconventional ideas. I needed permission to do something very atypical, very untraditional. I got it. This is one of the very few places in academia that a guy like me could thrive. And there's a place for me here and I really appreciate that. As his grad student now, I would be so surprised if I ever had a professor who had as much of an impact as he has on my life ever again. As much as I like the guitar work and as much as I care about it and as much as I like all the things I've written and all that, my students are clearly the most valuable thing I'll ever do professionally. When somebody is finished and they have this guitar in front of them, what I get to say is, look what you did. Did you know you could do this? And then I get to say, well, what else can you do that you didn't know about? That's a pretty good day when you get to do that. We're trying to teach them skills they need. We're trying to help them grow, become more confident, more insightful, more capable. And when that works, it changes the world.